From Australian Oceans Data Network
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Standard Operation Procedures for a Multibeam Survey: Acquisition & Processing

Created 12/02/2026

Updated 12/02/2026

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The Australian Maritime Jurisdiction of approximately 7,000,000 km2 has, at most, 25% of its seabed surveyed at high resolution. Since September 2001, under Commonwealth Policy on Spatial Data Access and Pricing, Intergovernmental Committee on Spatial Data Access and Pricing, the co-custodian of the bathymetry data collected within the Australian Marine Jurisdiction has been assigned to Geoscience Australia (GA). GA thus hosts various formats of raw as well as processed bathymetry datasets from multiple sensors, including multibeam sonar systems. The quality between datasets varies, depending on the objectives of the survey. As of January 2013, the multibeam sonar bathymetric coverage held by GA was acquired by 48 vessels, 26 different multibeam sonar systems in 9 different frequencies between 12 and 455 kHz. Consequently, GA has to deal with a variety of survey standards, making the post-processing and merging not efficient. The objective of this document is thus to provide standards and guidance to GA personnel and contractors who conduct multibeam data acquisition and processing during marine surveys to maximise consistency and efficiency. This document provides the most critical steps to multibeam acquisition and a mandatory checklist and deliverables. Specific details and tips for processing using Caris HIPS & SIPS software and Kongsberg EM series data are also provided in the appendix.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Standard Operation Procedures for a Multibeam Survey: Acquisition & Processing
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/ed40d702-3522-4518-b2b4-80042dc5fa85
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "Standard Operation Procedures for a Multibeam Survey: Acquisition & Processing". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/standard-operation-procedures-for-a-multibeam-survey-acquisition-processing5